Olympics? Bah, Humbug

The Olympics are coming to London! The stadium is being built, you can apply to be a volunteer and actually be part of this historic event. And the best part is that now it’s 2011, there’s only one year to go! One year!

Oh, shut up. There’s still a year to go and I hate the Olympics already. I’m not a sports watcher. Sure, I’ve been to the odd football match, and sometimes I even watch tennis. This is mainly when I’m very hungover and don’t have the energy to move to the other end of the sofa to pick up the remote control. I know we’re all meant to be feeling terribly patriotic and proud that we get to host such a historic event, but to be honest, I’m just finding it all mildly stressful.

As an east London resident, I have mixed feelings about the huge amount of regeneration and building work going on to create the Olympic site. On the one hand, it’ll spruce up run-down areas, create a number of much-needed jobs and bring in tourism. Tourism is good I suppose. Money for the depressed UK economy and all that.

The only thing is: I’m not really a fan of tourists either. I’m a member of the ‘power walking’ fraternity of Londoners – you may have seen us weaving a determined path down Oxford Street like downhill skiers. Tourists form an unexpected slalom run with their giant maps, which slow down our overall route by valuable minutes.

My other issue with the Olympics is that it will take over every single channel on the TV with random sporting events, like some kind of Big Brother without the obese people. Every programme that I like watching will be relegated to the middle of the night, as endless sailing, running, throwing, jumping and talking about it in excruciating detail takes over.  For those of us who aren’t interested, we’ll probably have to create a host of new hobbies to escape the monotony – oh, and find a new pub to spend our weekends in, as most of them will probably be polluted with giant screens showing the exact same random sporting events we’ve left home to avoid.

The thing is we’re no super-slick China. London, much like its bumbling mayor, is utterly charming but a little ramshackle. From the opening ceremony to the numerous events, it’s never all going to run smoothly. Buses will be late. Buildings won’t be finished. Someone will have lost the javelin. And who is going to have their lives disrupted by all this inefficiency?

Your average Londoner, trying  to get to work or do their weekly shop, that’s who.

Image by Matt from London, courtesy of Flick